September 9, 2010

I’ve never bought into all those Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim-intent-upon-destroying-America conspiracytheories. And yet…

I can’t deny that if Obama really were a secret Indonesian national, if he really were trying to subvert the US government, then he’d probably be doing exactly what he’s doing right now.

Thirty years ago, let’s remember, the Carter administration egged the USSR into invading Afghanistan, believing that such an action would lead to the Soviets’ destruction. As Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski has stated, by aiding anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the administration “knowingly increased the probability” that the Soviets would invade. Brzezinski continued:

That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

And now here we are, thirty years later, and Obama is following the same script that Brzezinski wrote for the Soviets. Mikhail Gorbachev, who oversaw the Soviet collapse, has warned that the US won’t be able to achieve its military ends and should start withdrawing its forces (h/t Antiwar.com). And yet the President insists on continuing down this road, somehow believing that things will turn out differently for us.

Ignoring the advice of Gorby, Obama has instead decided to follow the advice of another individual familiar with the Afghan-Soviet War. Osama Bin Laden—you remember him, right?— wants us to stay in Afghanistan, believing that the occupation is going to eventually bankrupt us. As he said in November 2004:

All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two Mujahedin to the farthest point East to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qa’ida in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits to their private companies. This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers as we alongside the Mujahedin bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. All Praise is due to Allah.

So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah is willing and nothing is too great for Allah.

According to the Obama administration’s own numbers, it currently costs around $1 million a year for every American soldier in Afghanistan. Since Obama’s surge has brought the total number of US troops in the country to around 100,000, we’re talking $100 billion a year. And this figure doesn’t include the hidden costs of the war—e.g., “higher oil prices, money to treat wounded veterans and interest payments on war loans.”

After eight disastrous years under Bush, in which the national debt rose by $5 trillion, and one disastrous year under Obama, in which the debt rose another $1.4 trillion, the US economy simply can’t take this. For nations don’t spend their way to prosperity; by dumping more and more money into Afghanistan, Obama is instead prolonging and increasing the severity of our current depression.

I’m not sure what the end result of all this will be. Some, like Gerald Celente, believe we’re nearing an even greater financial collapse and perhaps the end of the United States as we know it. Whatever the case, it’s clear that the President isn’t doing anybody, save for the terrorists (and, of course, his corporate buddies), any favors.